What happens when an Oregon indie pop stylist, stationed for a time in North Carolina, is in need of a working band for an unexpected touring opportunity? Why, he heads to Kentucky, of course.

That’s the situation then-Portland, now-Astoria based song stylist Justin Ringle, the ringmaster behind the Northwestern folk-pop troupe Horse Feathers, was in a few years ago. After completing duties as producer for the Asheville band River Whyless, a touring offer presented itself even though there was no working road version of Horse Feathers available. So Ringle called up a pair of Lexington pals, drummer Robby Cosenza and guitarist J. Tom Hnatow, as well as longstanding Horse Feathers violinist Nathan Crockett. The partnership wasn’t entirely new. Ringle had shared bills with Cosenza and Hnatow during their tenure in the multi-state rock collective These United States. But Ringle wasn’t just after a quick-fix band to hit the road with. He was pursuing a whole new artistic and sonic temperament.

“Back in 2016, when I was working in Asheville, I got called to do a tour in a pinch,” Ringle said. “Geographically, Tom and Robby were the closest people I knew so I gave them a call. One thing led to another and it just became evident that it was going to be a fresh start working in Kentucky.”

“We met probably 10 or 12 years ago,” Cosenza added. “We would cross paths on the road all the time and always admired each other as players. I think it just made more sense for Justin to find something closer than Astoria or Portland, but I think he was also looking to ramp things up a bit. He called Tom and said, ‘You guys aren’t available, are you?’ We were like, ‘Sure.’ He was taking a shot in the dark and it worked out.”

The tour led to sessions for the sixth Horse Feathers album, “Appreciation.” Recorded largely at La-La Land Studios in Louisville and Shangri-La in Lexington, Horse Feathers cemented the working alliance between Ringle, Cosenza and Hnatow while expanding the band’s previously studied and subtle indie folk sound. What resulted was a fuller rock, pop and soul charge that often echoed the exuberance of a vintage Van Morrison record.

“There were so many new perspectives I explored that came from doing a lot of the record in Kentucky,” Ringle said. “It was the first time I recorded outside of the state of Oregon. Robby and Tom helped greatly because they had been working in styles I don’t regularly experiment with. They’ve sat in on a lot of country, Americana and soul sessions. They’ve done work with all types of bands.

“It just came across as a band vibe,” Cosenza said of the “Appreciation” recording sessions. “It wasn’t like Tom and I were hired guns. We all wrote together, we arranged together. It clicked pretty naturally. A lot of times, Tom and I would be goofing off on a tune and that would be the stuff Justin would go, ‘Man, what was that? Use it.”

Recording so far from home might suggest an air of displacement in the new Horse Feathers songs. It’s there, for sure, but not because of the Bluegrass connection.

“I had felt a sense of displacement because I had moved from where I had lived for the previous decade,” Ringle said. “I moved out of Portland to the Southeast and then, consequently, to the Oregon coast. I had also started a new relationship, so there’s a number of themes about everything that goes into that – good and bad. But one of the biggest things artistically, aside from the songwriting and themes, was that I really wanted to explore some sonic differences that I hadn’t really gotten underneath the hood with. I hadn’t really explored full blown rock ‘n’ roll dynamics. I hadn’t explored soul. I hadn’t explored a number of those things. I had to surrender to an experiment.

“We ended up with a sound I didn’t anticipate, but one that I felt really resonated for me and for the band. We were all like, ‘Wow, this is working in a way that none of us expected.”

MUSINGS ON MUSIC FROM CENTRAL KENTUCKY AND BEYOND

meet walter tunis

I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.